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Over the holidays I read Clay Christensen’s, “How Will You Measure Your Life,” which was recommended by several of my colleagues. While the book was focused on applying business frameworks to your personal life, I believe that the same frameworks could also be applied to recruiting, and that made me think differently about our recruiting process at Pixlee.

As a startup looking to be successful in the recruiting war of 2014, you have to pick the battles that you can win. Being located in San Francisco, I’m constantly hearing about cool office spaces, ridiculous perks, lavish holiday parties and some outrageous bonuses. No one can deny that monetary incentives can play an important role in recruiting, but you’re not going to outspend Apple and you can’t give out as many free tacos as Google. As a startup you have to play the game differently to win.

English: Uncle Sam recruiting poster. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here are some guidelines that we go by:

1) Think of Compensation and Motivations Separately

Find ways to get people excited about the potential first, and the payout second.

In his book, Christensen explains Frederick Herzberg’s two-factor theory that distinguishes between hygiene and motivational factors. Hygiene factors (or in this case compensation factors) won’t necessarily make someone love his or her job but they will stop someone from hating it. These include titles, salary, job security, work conditions, and company perks. Motivational factors, on the other hand, include challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth.

The smaller you are as a company, the more you need to compete on these motivational factors. The influence of motivation factors largely depends on the individual, but that is actually a good thing for startups that want passionate employees who truly love what they do. If they don’t care about motivational factors they probably aren’t a good fit.

2) Make Recruiting A Real Priority

A mentor once told me, “If you want something to be a priority, it needs to be a priority for the CEO and founders.”

One of the most common phrases I hear in the startup community is “Hire ‘A’ players” As Christensen puts it, “Having a strategy means nothing if you’re not investing the resources that is consistent in the strategy.” If hiring ‘A’ players is a priority for your company then you better have your founders actively involved. As Y Combinator’s Sam Altman wrote in his blog post, “How to Hire,” founders should be spending about a third of their time hiring.

“You can’t outsource this,” Altman writes. “You need to be spending time identifying people, getting potential candidates to want to work at your company, and meeting every person that comes to interview.”

One of the benefits for an ‘A’ player is having greater access to the CEO and other executives. The recruiting process can help reinforce this opportunity to motivate people who are driven to take a bet.

From my experience I’ve found that there are no shortcuts in recruiting ‘A’ players. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t have time to meet with every engineering candidate. But if you’re running a small startup where every employee could make or break your company, you better be involved in the recruitment. A founder or CEO doesn’t need to ask all of the technical questions or do the first round of screening, but he or she should be involved. It’s meaningful when founders talk about why they started the company, why they are excited about what they do, and the role they see the candidate playing in the vision of the company.

3) Invest In The Relationship Even if the Candidate Isn’t The Right Fit

Your rejections can be just as important as your offers.

When Pixlee started to grow, I spent a lot of time speaking with other entrepreneurs and hiring managers about best practices around interviewing and hiring employees. Chances are the number of people you reject will be greater than the number of people you accept. One lesson that I quickly learned was your process for rejections are equally if not more important than your process for acceptance.

It’s a small world and the startup community is even smaller. If someone has a bad experience with your interview process, word will get around. My recommendation is to take the time to make sure everyone that interviewed with your company is treated with respect.

How do you show respect for candidates? First, make sure to get back to people in a timely manner, ideally by phone. Second, leave the door open for future conversations. As your company grows your needs will change and different skill sets will be required. Finally, as appropriate, pass them on to other startups that would benefit from their skills. This creates good will all around and can mean reciprocity later.